I looked around, expecting to see a young couple making out on a blanket in the field behind me. Nope. Not in the woods above the swings and slides, either. It was then I realized that the man was referring to a mother who was sitting on a private bench, on a hill overlooking the play structure. She was quietly nursing her sleeping newborn while her toddler played several yards away, breathing in the last gasps of a glorious summer evening. And also the secondhand smoke of the outraged man’s Marlboro Red.

Co-sleeping. The Family Bed. I don’t really care for either of these terms. Co-sleeping would imply that everybody involved is actually SLEEPING and The Family Bed conjures an image of Brangelina and their pack of 6, snuggled into their 8-foot, custom-made bed, dressed in fair trade cotton and sipping Chai. No, it is just the two of us. During Averi’s first six months of life we slept on our sides, facing one another, her tiny head on my outstretched arm. Her crib, lovingly set-up and dressed in soft linens sat unoccupied for over two years before finding a new home. Now she is three. After books, she asks me every night if I will hold her “with both hands”, as if I might say no. Most nights she sleeps without waking, but sometimes I will hear a tiny whisper: “BOTH hands…” I used to make the mistake of the unseasoned parent and tell total strangers about our sleeping arrangement. Most would gasp in horror. “You’ll never get her to sleep by herself!” “I would NEVER do that!” “That’s awful!” “How can you stand it?!” Maybe I would see things differently had I slept well prior to being a mother. Maybe I would be driven to insanity if my usual 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep were thrown off by sharing a bed with Averi. The truth is that I was an insomniac before and I am an insomniac now. If she was in a room all by herself, who would hear her talking in her sleep about flying with dinosaurs? Who would stop her from crawling off of the end of the bed when she is having a nightmare? Who would hold her with both hands?